The Dead Revolutionaries Club came about through a long process that we do not have the time, money and energy to bore you with except to say we were tired of seeing the same ol' dry uninteresting art writing, the same ol' usual suspects, the same ol' boring perspectives and especially the lack of criticality in the South African art scene.
You may wonder why Dead Revolutionaries? Somehow revolutionaries, just like artists, gain star-like status once they are dead and so we pay tribute to dead revolutionaries who continue to inspire us to be troublemakers. But dead revolutionaries are just that – dead – and our futures can only be changed by what we do ourselves and not what we wear on our T-shirts. So we decided to not only look back, but also look ahead, to each other and to ourselves to make a difference, to create, to fight, to poke fun at, to rip off and to challenge.

Dead Revolutionaries E-Zine, The Memoir Issue, Volume 2

The idea about a "Memoir" issue came about after two of us went to the book launch of "One Day I Will Write About This Place" by the Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina. How great it was to hear stories about his childhood and hear him field questions about the biographical. In African literature, like in the work of Tsitsi Dangarembga or Chimemanda Ngozi Adichie, childhood stories bring up issues which many people can relate to and which speak about other, more everyday and shared ideas of history which we think almost all of us born on the African continent can relate to in some ways – look also at classics like Chris van Wyk, Richard Rive, Es'kia Mphahlele, you name them. They make us laugh and cry and these stories also have the ability to grab at the heart and memories of other people who have led very different lives. I think these similarities draw us together but also convey a much more layered history of politics in all parts of the world.
While we are a bit too young to be writing biographies, we thought it might be a good way to marry the two ghosts of the DRC, the critical and the whimsical. So we started this edition on the "memoir" where we asked people to share their memories with us, for stories or drawings, fragments of thoughts, accepting anything which was submitted.